Rental Family

                                                                    3 of 4 Stars
 

It's hard not to like Brendan Fraser's 2nd act. The guy went through a very rough couple of decades, and there is some elements of life imitating art in this little redemption story.

Much like Lost in Translation, we have a fading actor and a Toyo backdrop here. Both of them are obvious outsiders in a massive city with traditions, customs, and norms they couldn't possibly understand.

Brendan plays a man named Phillip who is forced to take an acting job at an agency that rents out people to step in where there is a void, (it's based on a real business in Japan.) His first moment of insight comes when he goes through a sham wedding with an attractive Japanese woman to appease her parents. He's not feeling good about this at all. And then he learns the truth. The woman is gay and this is the only way for her to be with her lover. Like Phillip's colleague likes to remind him, there are things about our culture you couldn't possibly understand.

This won't be the last morally ambiguous tightrope Phillip has to walk. Soon he is playing a father who abandoned his family who makes a sudden return. The whole thing is orchestrated by her mother so the young girl can get into a prestigious school. That's as far as the mother has thought this through. Phillip is much different in his interactions, and he and the girl grow close. The prospect of breaking her heart is not in the least bit appealing to him, but, as my mother used to often remind me, "the truth will out" and she finds out anyway. The little girl Mia somehow finds a path to forgiveness here, which is of great relief to Phillip.

The last storyline gets even more complicated. A famous former actor is declining into dementia, and Phillip is hired to be a journalist who has come to interview him. Presumably this is to help him preserve his dignity, but the old man has other plans. He asks Phillip to take him home, which is a very long way from Tokyo. His daughter, who is closely supervising this operation, is not supportive of this or any other deviations from the plan. But the old man will not relent. "How can you possibly write about me if you don't know where I come from?" he asks, and Phillip realizes it's a pretty good question. 


As George Augustus Moore once said, "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." That seems to be the case here as well.


The old man finds the closure to his life he was looking for, and presumably dies at peace. Before he does this, he insists to the police that Phillip did not kidnap him and refuses to press charges, saving Phillip a whole lot of trouble.

A pivotal scene occurs near the end of the movie when Phillip enters the old man's mysterious shrine that seems to hold some kind of secret. Phillip enters the room and sees a mirror reflecting his own face right back at him. Then it clicks for him. The answer was within him the whole time. Connection, love, intimacy, purpose, and everything else he was looking for all start with the relationship he has with himself.

Some could argue that everything falls into place a little too easily here. But in taking the time to reflect, there is quite a lot in this little scene at the end with Phillip looking himself in the mirror. Why is it that people often feel so lonely when they are surrounded by so many people? It was the same puzzle Lost in Translation presented, but the answer is a little different here. One of the prominent books on depression is called, "I never knew I had a choice." It's a very long book, but the point is right there in the title. Every day we make choices that affect not just our own worlds, but the worlds of the people around us. The answers aren't "out there." Love, purpose, and connection don't just simply find us. Sometimes we need to put these things out into the world and then observe the feedback loop that develops.

And that's what happens here as well. At the end of the movie, the company has decided that lying to people will no longer be part of their approach. They will still be there if someone needs help, but they are going to go about things a bit differently now.

I liked (not loved) this movie. In a landscape dominated by one huge superhero, big-budget, movie after another, it's refreshing to watch a movie that takes places in a real world with real people.

They are getting harder and harder to find.